Children as young as 11 who demonstrate misogynistic behaviour will be taught the difference between pornography and real relationships, as part of a multimillion-pound investment to tackle misogyny in England’s schools, the Guardian understands.
On the eve of the government publishing its long-awaited strategy to halve violence against women and girls (VAWG) in a decade, David Lammy told the Guardian that the battle “begins with how we raise our boys”, adding that toxic masculinity and keeping girls and women safe were “bound together”.
As part of the government’s flagship strategy, which was initially expected in the spring, teachers will be able to send young people at risk of causing harm on behavioural courses, and will be trained to intervene if they witness disturbing or worrying behaviour.
Is porn really behind the misogyny? What about the tards in the so-called “manosphere” saying all sorts of crazy and immoral shit? Those have more reach than whatever extremely weird pornography is supposed to be at fault. Is this what not being able to say “this is objectively wrong/right” because of Western moral relativism leads to?
It’s in the article and it’s very good. You should read it.
Preventing young men being harmed by “manosphere” influencers such as Andrew Tate.
That was one line in a whole article focusing on knowing porn isn’t realistic and whatnot… I just feel like if they had any hard moral beliefs (could be as simple and basic as the Ten Commandments, idk), they could build on them, this feels very inefficient.
This is going to backfire hard. Kids aren’t stupid, they know when they’re looked down upon. These classes are going to be rejected by the boys who end up taking them, and they’ll resent what it stands for.
It reminds me of the US back in the 80s when schools pushed abstinence extremely hard. That didn’t stop kids from having sex, and this won’t stop misogyny.
The only way schools can contribute meaningfully to ending sexism is by providing a safe environment that requires young boys and girls to actually interact with each other in natural and healthy ways outside of class time.
Kinda like how DARE taught us what all the drugs looked like, how to spot fakes, and how to find the dealers?
After reading the article, it seems like there’s a lot more to this than just classes for boys. I struggle to draw the same comparison to 80s abstinence-only sex education, and I think schools can contribute in more ways than the one you listed, like the ones mentioned in the article.
Are we reading the same things? Here are some quotes from the article that I found problematic:
Children as young as 11 who demonstrate misogynistic behaviour will be taught the difference between pornography and real relationships
They’re trying to pin porn as the cause of misogyny and that’s really stupid for a variety of reasons.
As part of the government’s flagship strategy, which was initially expected in the spring, teachers will be able to send young people at risk of causing harm on behavioural courses, and will be trained to intervene if they witness disturbing or worrying behaviour.
See, these classes are not meant to be a part of the normal sex ed curriculum where they’re taught to everybody because the information is valuable. They’re specifically meant to be punitive. The idea is to signal out kids and force them to take these classes as a consequence.
To out of touch activists, this sounds good, but in reality the kids who are being sent there are going to feel humiliated in front of their peers, and they’re going to resent both the material being taught and the system that put them through it.
Keir Starmer, announcing the strategy, said: “Every parent should be able to trust that their daughter is safe at school, online and in her relationships. But too often toxic ideas are taking hold early and going unchallenged.”
This is a theme that’s echoed in the entire article, and it is also reflected in the actual strategy. I could’ve quoted a bunch of different statements, but I specifically chose this one because it’s coming from the top. You have the PM here pushing the false idea that only girls can be victims and that boys are the problem.
The much-trailed strategy is expected to focus on three pillars:
- Preventing young men being harmed by “manosphere” influencers such as Andrew Tate.
Are you kidding me? The “manosphere” is an online slang term, Andrew Tate is a meme. How can you possibly draft policies in general, let alone ones about education, on something so vague, unsubstantiated, and unacademic?
The point is that if the entire curriculum was taught like normal sex ed where it’s apolitical, fact based, and required to be taken by all students because it contains useful information that they need to know then there wouldn’t be an issue. However, that’s not the case. It is narrative driven, it is not entirely fact based, and it’s not applied to all students across the board. The whole thing just seems unprincipled and poorly thought out. This strategy looks like something planned by radfem weirdos on Reddit, not by people who are in charge of the education system of an entire country.
Schools should focus on facts. Not political narratives about the evils of pornography necessarily leading to misogyny and sexual assault or that they are all ‘manosphere influenced’ until prove otherwise. that kind of mentality is some witch-hunt bullshit.
Porn is also incredibly diverse its content. Like video games, or comics, it’s treated as if it was this singular mass of crassness and crudeness and could never have any redemptive value. There is a vast difference between sexual assault fetish commercially produced porn and a loving couple who just wants to share tehir passion for sexual pleasure with each other with the world and make a few bucks on onlyfans. And the former is a dying breed.
You’re focusing specifically on porn, but the plan in the article doesn’t. The plan isn’t to tell boys to “just say no” to porn.
You’ll find no disagreements from me that porn isn’t necessarily the root cause of misogyny, but I don’t think anything in the article suggests that.
no i’m focusing on value judgement crap that assumes boys are all evil unless educated otherwise, and seeks to socially isolate them to ‘re-educate’ them.
this is the type of plan that is likely to backfire, and will probably introduce potential abusers to the tools to become better abusers. The average boy has no knowledge or interest in any of these things. it’s punishing the majority rather than addressing a minority.
also what are the specific criteria that identity a boy as a proto-misogynist? interesting how that isn’t mentioned. nor what ‘healthy relationships’ means. will this program be espousing traditional sexist gender values as ‘healthy’ ones? as if those values were not misogynistic?
I think you’re making some leaps here. Nothing in the article is suggesting that all boys are evil, or that they’re going to be socially isolated. Granted, the article doesn’t exactly give specifics about how it’ll be enacted, but I feel like you’re filling in the gaps with the worst stuff you can imagine, and then getting mad at that.
From my reading of the article, it seems like they’re just adding topics like pornography, deep-fake/image abuse, consent, coercion, peer-pressure, online abuse, etc. to the curriculum, coupled with training for teachers to be able to recognize and address misogynistic behaviors. Again, I’ll grant that the article is missing some important details like how they’re going to teach those various topics, how they’re going to empower teachers to identify problems, the checks and balances they’ll use to prevent teachers abusing the system, what they’re defining as misogyny, etc. But I feel like those details are a little too in-the-weeds for this type of overview article, and until we do know what those details are, I don’t think filling those gaps by assuming the worst is productive.
No, the policy/program makes that assumption. Guilty, until proven innocent.
the article says they will be specifically targeted for being ‘misogynists’ but says nothing about what determines that qualification.
And if it’s like any other government education program, it will produce solely negative and crappy results and just be weaponized against students and teachers both, preventing free and educational discussions of these topics and teaching them according to some illiberal and idiotic stereotypical standards the know-nothing government officials have made out of ignorance and blanket determinations of what these things ‘are’.
I’m no in the UK but I’m well aware of how horribly the USA education system deals with these topics, and how all the schools take a HR approach to the topic rather than an educational one. We weren’t even allowed to ask questions about sex or relationships and it was taught from a narrow and ignorant perspective that ignored all the insights of modern science and social science.
And if it’s like any other government education program, it will produce solely negative and crappy results and just be weaponized against students and teachers both
This is how I know you’re just being grumpy to be grumpy. This is extreme hyperbole at best. No public education system is perfect, far from it, but to claim every government education system ever has only produced negative results is insane.
If this was based on scientific research, you bet that the creators would be pushing the academics that formed the policy to endorse this. This is just junk pseudo-science. Serious researchers would do small sample testing before rolling out a wide program, especially for something like this
Any large scale plan, involving teachers, and students needs to be boiled down to extremely simple concepts that can be taught in a few words. Most kids have a hard time with subtraction and division. This will become simplified and resented.
bingo. that’s the fundamental flaw.
sex and sexuality is incredibly complex, subjective, and nuanced. the government can’t even teach kids the basics of math and reading… and thinks it’s somehow going to teaching 11 year olds about sex is going to magically reduce violence… 11 year olds for most of whom sex is a foreign concept and will be until for another 4-6 years of their lives.
it’s political grandstanding really. they are doing this to score points with the public at the expense of school children.
yep. nothing makes kids resent you more than being condescending to them or telling them something is horrible and bad and will corrupt them.
this puritanism nonsense makes zero sense. sex education should be about the facts of sex. not value judgements about waht is ‘good’ porn or not. and female students should be included. this notion that ‘women don’t watch porn’ is completely nonsense.
The more you look into what’s being planned here, the worse it gets
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Why so negative? I’m too lazy to read the article, but are you commenting on actual lesson plans, or on what you assume the classes will be like? It doesn’t seem like a stretch to me that this could work for some kids, especially for those whose behavior is the result of exposure to porn at too young an age.
I recommend you read the article, it’s a pretty quick read. The way that this is planned sets it up for failure. This sounds more like something some politicians came up with to appease the activists in their base than something made by actual experts in the field who have the kids’ best interests in mind.
“Can’t talk now lads, I’m off to porn class!”
monty_python_meaning_of_life_scene.mp4
Tbh the threat of being labeled a gooner might do more to prevent misogyny than anything else
I think the problem is not just porn… Maybe… Also society, systemically? Maybe also the parents? Television, Internet culture, business culture, religion, oh yeah, also RELIGION.
You know what stops misogyny? Education and real leadership. Not blaming pornography and kids not knowing the difference between
musicmoviesvideogamesporn and reality.I don’t think porn is to blame for that, rather social media but at least there’s learning.
They work in conjunction. Porn doesn’t present a complete picture and social media personalities fill those blanks with misogyny.
Hate to say it, but this reminds me of that Monty python Meaning of Life sketch about the John Cleese teaching bored kids about sex
The healthiest thing is a decent sexual education to tackle all the topics rather than only this issue in these cases… but very welcome anyway
The healthiest thing is to learn good behaviors organically from the people and culture around you, not from a classroom.
I doubt that the cause of misogyny in 11 year old boys is porn. I’m happy they’re trying something, I just hope it doesn’t backfire
yes, but if you were a unreasonable sex-negative person you would. and most people are unreasonable and have sex-negative views.
it’s also loaded with sexist assumptions that boys are sex offenders by default unless they are ‘corrected’ by society.
No mention of what behavior they are talking about, misogyny is a pretty wide and often vague subject. It’s almost like we’re not supposed to know the details so we can’t decide for ourselves if the behaviors need ‘correcting’ instead of taking their word at a claim of misogyny alone.
I’ve been called a misogynist a lot. Mostly when I am confronting a woman about her crappy behaviour towards other people or myself. It’s definable a term that is used to avoid accountability, or against anyone who doesn’t agree with benevolent sexism towards women.
TBF you are a tactless individual.
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“I’ve been called a misogynist a lot”
i’ve also been called gay a lot. and yet i have no sexual interest in men. weird how other peoples perceptions of you may be totally incorrect.
it’s almost as if other people’s opinions have no bearing on what we really are.
It’s very sad to see negative comments like “I’m against everything the State does because the State is bad.” Basically, these are people who deny the harmful effects of porn and the porn industry. I assume they’re just a bunch of porn addicts who can’t handle criticism of their drug.
That’s a strawman argument, and I assume you know that. I can remember being a kid and my mindset then. The point isn’t “the State is bad” (though it is), the point is “kids naturally rebel against institutional authority figures and the programs those authority figures conduct.”
Remind me how successful DARE was?
This is essentially a childhood version of trying to legislate personal behavior and beliefs without addressing the social and material conditions that give rise to those behaviors and beliefs.
Want to stop (or at least start to tackle) misogyny? Hold companies whose algorithms promote it financially responsible. Actually convict, or at least prosecute, high-profile creeps like Prince Andrew. Make DNA processing of rape kits a priority, and stop giving rapists lighter sentences than drug dealers. Prosecute companies like Roblox and Meta who knowingly allow creeps to hit on minors (though that isn’t limited to just girls, it still helps contribute to the social conditions and sense of impunity). Teach your own kids to shame their friends who behave in misogynistic ways, and to fight back if they’re pushed to accept such behavior. In particularly severe instances, like boys who actually physically assault girls, maybe consider having the state examine their home life and, if appropriate, pursue some type of action against fathers (or maybe mothers but… probably not often) who condone such behavior.
And even a lot of that is still surface-level stuff. For example, if you want parents to be able to raise their children more and have the algorithm raise them less, we need higher wages and lower costs of living (or, even better, the full surplus profits of our labor which we are rightfully entitled to). Ideally, we also need those parents to be given a good education so they can critically think about the material they are presented with online. As with basically everything, the problem is, at least partially, capitalism. If you want children to learn how to be functional, healthy humans, they need unsupervised places to play and learn on their own - a recent study showed that most kids would prefer unsupervised outdoor play (where generally there are no Andrew Tate-esque figures yelling misogynistic garbage at them) to unsupervised screen time (where there often are), but parents more often deny the former and allow the latter.
A stern institutional finger-wagging serves to make the institution feel like they’re doing something and like the broken system under which we all live is capable of being repaired and reformed. Hopefully I’m wrong and this program is a massive success, but I wouldn’t hold my breath.
Kids dont naturally rebel against authority figures. If they respect the authority figure, they are remarkably adaptable and can make great change quickly. If they dont respect the authority figure, they will do as you say.
Well, maybe I’m just projecting then, but as a child I had no inherent respect for any authority simply for authority’s sake. I trusted authorities to give me a sufficient explanation as to why something was, or had to be, a certain way. If they couldn’t do that, I didn’t care how much older they were than me or what their titles were, I did not listen to them.
The example my parents always give when recounting my childhood is that my dad could say, “Don’t run in the street,” and the first thing I would want to do would be to run in the street. But my mom could say, “You shouldn’t run in the street because cars are very heavy, very fast, and can’t stop quickly, so they could hurt you very much,” and I would accept that and not run in the street.
I liked (most of) my teachers as a kid and I would never be mean to them or intentionally make their lives harder, but that’s not the same thing as listening to them or respecting their authority. Even in elementary school, I understood things like Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” policy and how that resulted in me being given work far below my level that wasted my life and potential. There is no reason for a child to respect any authority derived from the public school system, to be frank.
Granted that’s a very American perspective, but I can’t imagine it’s too much different in Britain given the near-analogous nature of our political parties.
Futanari isn’t misogynistic, so I’m assuming this law would be OK with it.
And yet, as with every article discussing schooling, or exams, it’s illustrated with a photograph of schoolgirls in short skirts. I think that’s a bit weird, personally.
Edit, as there seems to be some misunderstanding: people can wear whatever they want - I find it weird that the newspapers always illustrate their articles about schools and exams with pictures of school girls in short skirts. It’s never boys, and never girls in trousers. This is especially ironic in an article about how boys view girls.
What a girl or woman wears should not be important to the issue at hand.
Practice some self-control.
I’ve edited my comment, as I think I didn’t communicate clearly enough.
Yeah, ive always found it disgusting that school uniforms can mandate girls must wear skirts especially in places like Japan where the sexual assault rate is so high
Sad that it is required and that parents are unwilling to do it
“Step-bro mom and dad wanna talk to us.”
(I’m so sorry. I couldn’t not)
We gonna have a class for girls on the difference between romance stories and real relationships?
No, because we all know that men not living up to women’s fantasy ideals is their personal failing as men. These boys need to learn that if they aren’t BDSM billionaires they don’t deserve a woman.
And men having fantasy ideals about women, is hateful and bigoted. We can’t have that, and since porn is mostly male sex fantasies it is wrong and bad.
These boys need to learn that if they aren’t BDSM billionaires they don’t deserve a woman.
I’m sorry but that’s not why you don’t have a woman. It’s because your personality is insufferable, from what you’ve shown in this thread.
Found the incel
The wrong people are in power.
